Juno News - Parents suing Catholic hospital for not giving their daughter assisted suicide

00:00:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:00:08.880 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here yes i know the annual

00:00:18.960 institute of irreverence just released its latest irreverent rankings and once again we are at the

00:00:23.980 top it was uh us and peter mansbridge's podcast that were in the running but we ended up coming

00:00:29.980 out on top uh this is the andrew lawton show as mentioned good to have you aboard on true north

00:00:34.940 whether you're listening to the podcast watching on youtube on rumble i was going to say on facebook

00:00:40.240 we're still because of the whole online news act effectively banned from having our content seen

00:00:46.160 on facebook so i think we have like one guy in espatini who is seeing it but anyone in canada

00:00:51.100 isn't so we still try you never know but i do want to begin and i'm going to be talking about a

00:00:55.680 whole bunch of different things today we'll be touching base later on in the show with page

00:00:59.280 mcpherson about what's going on in your kids classrooms we'll also talk about what's happening

00:01:04.360 in your city council a little bit with lynn mcdonald a former new democrat member of parliament

00:01:10.320 and history professor who has been one of the most vocal in speaking out against the unfair maligning

00:01:17.860 of henry dundas henry dundas who has had his name purged from young dundas square in toronto there

00:01:25.540 was a bit of an update on that story this week that we'll talk about but i also want to talk

00:01:30.520 most importantly to me anyway for the course of today's episode about this story in british columbia

00:01:36.680 that touches on a discussion we had last week about maid or medical assistance in dying or assisted

00:01:42.600 suicide or euthanasia it had lots of names lots of nicknames i don't like made because it is a bit

00:01:48.600 of a euphemism but sometimes i i slip into it as a bit of a shorthand but know that i believe very much

00:01:54.840 there is a culture of death in this country i'm coming right out of the gate with it because

00:01:58.840 we have seen in canada the expansion of so-called made from something that was meant to be so narrow

00:02:05.240 focused on a specific type of person that had a foreseeable death that was in excruciating pain

00:02:12.360 and discomfort where we know that they're going to die on their own and we can allow them to die

00:02:17.480 earlier that was the initial case people with severe degenerative diseases and this as soon as that

00:02:23.400 happened as soon as that was legalized in canada after the carter case we started to see the

00:02:28.360 eligibility criteria broadened further and further until now we have a plan afoot to expand access to

00:02:36.440 assisted dying to people that have only a mental illness there is nothing physically wrong with them 0.77

00:02:42.440 but they will still be eligible and for me i've shared my own experiences as a survivor of depression

00:02:48.280 and suicide someone who i'm convinced would have made an effort to avail myself of state sanctioned

00:02:55.240 state assisted death had it been available to me back in 2010 when i was going through the very

00:03:01.400 worst of my struggles but there are other aspects of this case that in this story this issue that are

00:03:08.920 not just about who's eligible it's about who has to do it who has to facilitate this life ending i

00:03:16.040 can't even call it a treatment because it's not a treatment this life ending procedure even the most i

00:03:21.800 shouldn't say even the most but many of the most ardent activists for assisted suicide do not go so

00:03:27.800 far as to say that every single doctor should have to do it there has been in the system a level of

00:03:33.960 tolerance if not respect for conscience rights for doctors who say i because of my conscientious beliefs

00:03:42.120 my religious beliefs or my beliefs of what my job is as a doctor i am not comfortable partaking in this

00:03:49.240 and you also have institutions that are like that in particular catholic institutions that still have

00:03:55.240 in some key respects a respect for life baked into their approach to health care the reason i'm talking

00:04:01.160 about this now is because there's a case in british columbia where providence health has had to transfer

00:04:08.680 nine patients due to its opposition to assisted dying sorry 19 patients

00:04:14.680 they've had to transfer 19 patients to other facilities that will do this that will go it

00:04:20.920 this is because they were in saint paul's hospital that which is a run well there's actually been

00:04:26.760 different ones saint paul's hospital mount saint joseph hospital may's place hospice and saint john's

00:04:32.760 hospice this is a network of health care facilities that are run by a catholic organization which does not

00:04:40.440 believe in offering assisted suicide so now the government is getting all concerned about this

00:04:45.640 the government the bc government has actually encouraged a lawsuit that's being filed against

00:04:50.760 the family of one patient against a physician as well suing the hospital for saying they violated

00:04:57.640 the patient's charter rights the hospital discriminated against the patient violated her constitutional

00:05:03.640 rights the family says by not killing her now this was a 34 year old woman dealing with terminal cancer

00:05:11.800 my heart breaks for her and for her family i am not at all commenting on her case and whether

00:05:17.160 she should have or should not have been eligible for made what i am talking about here is this family's

00:05:22.360 belief that that hospital that she was in had an obligation to facilitate this that an organization that

00:05:30.360 was not comfortable with this doctors nurses that were not comfortable with this that they should 0.84

00:05:35.160 have to do this no one denied her the right to end her life to the contrary she was transferred out

00:05:41.080 brought to a facility that would offer this her name is samantha o'neill she died from assisted

00:05:46.760 suicide in april of 2023 it was a 12 kilometer ambulance ride part of the issue that's being raised

00:05:54.680 by her family is that she was in such pain and discomfort she had to be sedated for the ride it's

00:05:59.720 not the most comfortable situation i get it you don't want to go on a road trip when you're in

00:06:04.360 such a terrible state in your health but at the end of the day we're talking about something very

00:06:09.640 fundamental here and i believe wholeheartedly that it is not a violation of your rights to not end your

00:06:15.320 life but it would be a violation of the hospital's rights and the rights of its staff and practitioners

00:06:21.480 to force them to work against what they believe to force them to do something they are clearly not

00:06:29.080 comfortable with and and by the way i've talked about this with so many different practitioners

00:06:33.000 and they they all say the ones who are uh critical of this regime critical of this system that there

00:06:39.160 is no earthly way that you can call assisted suicide health care health care is about improving the life

00:06:45.960 and health of patients it's about when possible lengthening their life and the reason palliative care

00:06:52.840 has emerged as a discipline is because we realize that when you cannot extend that you provide

00:06:58.360 comfort you provide care you you often hear the euphemism making them comfortable that is very

00:07:04.200 different from prematurely ending it which is why there are some people that have a philosophical moral

00:07:09.960 or religious objection to this now one obvious criticism that comes up of this as well it's a

00:07:14.920 public health care system so all hospitals all doctors should have to go along with this the problem

00:07:20.680 with that argument first and foremost is that the public health care system does not trump

00:07:24.920 your religious and conscientious rights as a doctor it doesn't deal with the fact that you still as

00:07:32.200 an individual have a right no one can force you to do this and people say oh well maybe you just

00:07:37.320 shouldn't be a doctor well the reality is in our public health care system a catholic hospital doesn't

00:07:43.480 have the right to say we are going to be a catholic hospital that operates outside the public health care

00:07:48.520 system if we were to talk about a situation in which we are going to allow that then maybe we could

00:07:54.840 talk about whether the public system should have to go with a certain approach to this and alternative

00:08:00.760 religious run facilities don't but that's not where we are now and british columbia has always

00:08:06.760 been when it comes to assisted suicide one of the most in fact i would say the most permissive regimes

00:08:12.120 for it in the country in british columbia people who were never eligible or wouldn't be eligible in

00:08:17.320 other provinces for made as it's called would actually be able to find doctors willing to sign off on

00:08:23.800 this and ultimately end patients lives even before the criteria expanded to as broad criteria as they

00:08:31.720 have now so this does rile me up because the whole point of this is that we have given up on people we

00:08:38.520 have given up on the idea that life can improve i am particularly riled about the mental illness 0.81

00:08:44.120 expansion which i realize is not the one at issue in this particular case but i'm also very frustrated by

00:08:51.080 those who seek to deny conscience rights those who seek to say that your strongly held moral beliefs

00:08:57.800 about the value of life beliefs that in many cases are why catholic charities are running hospitals in

00:09:03.640 the first place because they want to and i'm not catholic but they want to make people's lives better

00:09:09.400 they want to help they want to contribute and then you get people like david eby the premier basically

00:09:15.800 and the patients who are suing the lawyers who are taking up this case the activists at the so-called

00:09:20.920 dying with dignity organization saying that no no you should have to do this you actually don't have

00:09:26.200 a right to value life that's what these people are saying when they're ultimately taking lawsuits

00:09:32.200 against catholic charities for not killing their patients you think of how many millions of dollars

00:09:37.560 are spent on malpractice lawsuits of doctors who make a mistake that ends up harming a patient or in

00:09:44.280 terrible cases killing a patient now we have a lawsuit led by people who are concerned that doctors

00:09:50.840 didn't kill a patient that they said you know we actually do not offer this and this wasn't the

00:09:56.120 case of someone picking out this woman and saying we are not going to provide this this is a case

00:10:02.040 of a hospital saying we simply don't offer this so the bz government has gone so far as to build

00:10:07.880 a facility next door to it basically they're trying to build an alternative so that instead of taking

00:10:13.240 the 12 kilometer ambulance ride to another hospice you can just go next door and get your end of life

00:10:19.800 care there now this is not the first time this has happened in bc there's a story that true north has

00:10:25.080 covered in the past with the delta hospice which is again a facility that does not offer made they have

00:10:30.840 an incredible focus on palliative care they were ultimately evicted from a building they had a long time

00:10:38.360 lease with the hospital over because the hospital wanted to get rid of them to take over care because

00:10:44.360 they wanted to offer assisted suicide it was so important that they were going to evict the kind 1.00

00:10:49.960 charitable hospice organizers and they did they kicked them all out angelina ireland who was the 1.00

00:10:55.080 head of the society and still is the head of the hospice society has spoken out about this

00:10:59.720 and her view is that maid is not health care that maid is not in fact a treatment and it is something 0.92

00:11:07.000 that is a slap in the face to palliative care which is a discipline that has i think it's about a five

00:11:11.800 or six decade long history in medicine and again i am not trying to convince anyone for or against

00:11:18.840 assisted suicide more broadly i'm trying to talk here about if we are going to have this as legal in

00:11:24.600 canada which is not changing right now at the very least we have to expect and respect that there are

00:11:31.800 people that are not going to want to do this and in a free society we respect those rights

00:11:37.240 you as a patient have the right to go elsewhere no one has denied any patients in british columbia's

00:11:42.840 right to seek this elsewhere if they are eligible but to force a doctor to pick up a needle to force

00:11:49.000 a hospital to force a doctor to do that is absolutely disgraceful and by the way cbc's story about this

00:11:56.280 the headline providence health reveals 19 patients were forced to transfer this year due to its maid policy

00:12:02.680 nowhere in this article do they explain why the health care center why saint paul's hospital is

00:12:10.360 not offering this nowhere do they speak about conscience rights in fact the word conscience

00:12:14.200 doesn't appear in the story nowhere in the article do they talk to anyone about why conscience rights

00:12:20.680 matter they could have picked up the phone and spoken to nicole scheidel of physicians for life

00:12:24.920 they could have spoken to a constitutional scholar they could have spoken to a bioethicist

00:12:29.720 they could have spoken to anyone they could have spoken to me hell it's a slow day i would answer the

00:12:33.720 phone and do this but they have not talked about what actually is at stake here instead they quote

00:12:39.320 activists that are saying this is absurd they quote a professor who worked with that a so-called

00:12:44.600 dying with dignity canada group just crapping all over the hospital for protecting and defending

00:12:50.600 conscience rights so cbc is effectively here pushing this idea that doctors and hospitals should be

00:12:57.000 forced to offer assisted suicide on command even if they have long-standing moral objections and in

00:13:03.880 many cases medical objections to doing so but absolutely disgraceful all around i wanted to pivot from

00:13:11.720 british columbia to toronto here so if you've been following this saga young dundas square is the like

00:13:19.640 weird canadian imitation of time square it's a lot smaller it's a lot less happening but now you can't

00:13:24.920 call it young dundas square the city is renaming it to quote unquote sankofa square and as true north

00:13:32.200 talked about in the past the word sankofa has its own little sordid history that we'll talk about in

00:13:38.120 just a couple of moments this week uh the executive committee of toronto city council got together and

00:13:43.480 they are basically trying to figure out how much money this is going to cost and they think they

00:13:48.760 need more money to do it to change the signs and update all of this stuff but it's all based on a

00:13:54.920 premise that is just fundamentally wrong the premise that henry dundas is a figure in history worthy of

00:14:02.920 cancellation and anyone familiar with his history with canada's history with the uk's history would

00:14:08.680 know that this is absolutely not the case but clearly there are people that don't understand

00:14:12.680 that so we thought we'd give a bit of a history lesson here on the show it's our delight to welcome

00:14:17.240 back lynn mcdonald who is a professor emeritus at the university of guelph and also a former member

00:14:23.320 of parliament and someone who is not prepared to accept the unfair maligning of henry dundas and his

00:14:29.080 legacy here lynn good to talk to you again thanks so much for coming on today glad to be with you for

00:14:34.600 the show so obviously there's from a municipal taxpayer perspective lots that can be discussed

00:14:40.760 about this just in terms of how much the city of toronto is trying to spend on this but when it comes

00:14:46.360 down to it the issue that i have and the one that you've raised in a a rather lovely piece in the

00:14:50.760 national post this week is that we're doing this all based on this faulty premise this idea that

00:14:56.280 dundas is this figure from which we should be running as far as historic legacy is concerned

00:15:02.360 let me just begin by asking you right there for people that haven't familiarized themselves with

00:15:06.440 this issue as much why is dundas being so unfairly in your view maligned it's hard to understand why

00:15:14.280 it's happening because it's so obviously wrong to blame him now what happened is it came up in

00:15:20.360 edinburgh because uh henry dundas was from edinburgh and there's a melview statue and so on and the

00:15:25.400 edinburgh city council went after and plenty of scottish historians said how wrong they were so this

00:15:31.240 was contested in edinburgh before it happened here and then here and how olivia child who herself was 0.61

00:15:38.760 a member of parliament how she could get it wrong is just nuts the supposed delaying of the abolition of

00:15:47.400 slavery uh that dundas was accused of was never a law that he got delayed it was only a motion which is

00:15:57.240 an opinion and the abolition of slavery at the time that wilberforce had uh he had introduced it in 1791

00:16:05.160 then 1792 dundas was there and he moved an amendment to make it gradual but it hadn't passed it didn't come

00:16:12.280 close to passing when it was uh full abolition immediate the year before it didn't have a hope

00:16:18.840 of getting through the house of lords it wasn't a bill it wouldn't become a lot was only an opinion

00:16:23.720 so he didn't delay anything and he was a committed abolitionist even before that he had gotten slavery

00:16:30.680 abolished in scotland by taking a law case on appeal it went to the law lords and the law lords decided

00:16:37.960 that there could be no slavery in scotland thanks to his arguments so he already had a very strong

00:16:43.960 reputation for being pro-abolition yeah and it's so easy to find too we're not talking about a legacy

00:16:53.080 that has been all that obscured and there simcoe in it is another example of someone who was an abolitionist

00:17:00.920 and he's criticized in some parts because he took an incremental view which he did because he was so

00:17:06.840 committed to abolition he wanted it to work and in dundas's case that that even doesn't really apply

00:17:12.840 here because he did move ahead as you note in scotland and i'm left with the the hypothesis here

00:17:18.840 that he is guilty of just being alive in history and that no one is really able to emerge from that period

00:17:27.320 well dundas understood that it would take time and that there'd have to be negotiations and you'd have

00:17:34.040 to buy off the slave owners in the west indies the plantation owners he understood that he was more

00:17:40.200 realistic but even he did not have any idea how long it would take and people are disgusted when

00:17:46.840 eventually slavery was abolished and the legislation finally passed in 1833 to apply in 1834 and this

00:17:55.800 supposed delay of dundas this is 1792 so it's years since that uh it's coming forward again and it's

00:18:03.880 just uh it just dundas just didn't know how long it would take and even when the bill went through in

00:18:12.120 1834 it didn't get applied properly because slave uh slave owners they could keep buying slaves because 0.97

00:18:20.840 you could make money in the slave trade and people did so you have a law that finally said that one

00:18:26.200 was passed in 1807 that you know the slave trade was abolished by the british parliament well it it 0.90

00:18:32.120 isn't abolished if slave traders are out there and no one can catch them the atlantic ocean is a very large 0.99

00:18:37.640 ocean so let me ask you about the attitude behind this because it should be noted you were when you served

00:18:46.200 in parliament to a new democrat you've been committed your entire career to the principles of

00:18:50.680 social justice so you're not coming at this from a place that some people might inherently accuse

00:18:55.560 critics of of this historic revisionism from and that you're not sensitive to racial concerns you're

00:19:01.080 not sensitive to social justice but but many of the people who are committed to this idea of purging

00:19:06.520 dundas's name believe they are doing so because they're they're trying to be anti-racist and what is

00:19:12.920 it they're getting wrong well i agree with you they they think they're doing the right thing

00:19:18.280 and of course there is racism no racism no doubt about it black people indigenous people are

00:19:24.200 discriminated against no doubt about that but he uh what uh people like dundas and wilberforce were

00:19:31.720 trying to do was right but was going to take a very long time and the idea of using the sankofa square

00:19:39.160 oh we could it's a ghanaan term so it's african so somehow that makes it more virtuous but if you

00:19:44.840 look at ghana the new name for the old gold coast it was a slave society well slaves were all over 0.98

00:19:52.120 africa and in most of the world for that matter uh they were there but ghana had a particularly

00:19:59.240 horrible version of slavery in which the slaves of a chief who died would be beheaded so that they

00:20:07.320 could serve him in the afterlife so again is even worse so here we have we in ontario uh or from our

00:20:14.520 ancestors uh got a thanks to simcoe got a bill through in 1793 gradual but it started and here

00:20:23.720 here uh the material i i have turned up shows how horrible the practice of slavery is in gana and

00:20:30.200 that's in 1847 after slavery had been abolished in the british empire but it's still going strong in

00:20:36.760 ghana yeah and and when you mention that history and we had reported on that a while ago the origins

00:20:42.280 of the word sankofa which they're trying to rename young dundas square to and the and the meaning of

00:20:48.600 it is learning from the past which is you know delightfully ironic for people committed to erasing

00:20:53.160 history but that's neither here nor there you know what people often forget about slavery and this

00:20:58.600 is by no means to uh both sides it or talk about one group being better than another but it's it was

00:21:05.560 fueled not just by white colonialists there were people in africa that were selling other people

00:21:10.520 from africa into the atlantic slave trade and you are right to point out that in ghana this particular

00:21:16.040 pocket that was a particularly insidious practice slaves that were being shipped across the atlantic and

00:21:21.880 slaves that were being used and traded within africa yes indeed i mean slavery was there the

00:21:27.800 slave traders who came in to the ports in ghana and other places they didn't have to go out looking

00:21:34.280 for slaves they were brought right to the port by slave traders and some of the people would already 0.91

00:21:39.800 have been slaves so they weren't just enslaved at that point some of them would have been but some of

00:21:45.000 them were simply kidnapped and they were brought to the port and sold it was a commerce and ghanaan

00:21:51.000 leaders made money from the slave trade at the expense of ordinary uh ordinary uh ghanaans or uh

00:22:00.120 or slave ghanaans but people who were free who were then kidnapped and sold into slavery

00:22:06.920 so to bring this back to the toronto context i mean when i started learning about the origins of

00:22:12.840 the word sankofa and the tribe that had minted that word there was a part i had some schadenfreude about

00:22:19.080 it because i i was expecting that okay all of these people that were pushing the eraser of the

00:22:23.880 name dundas would find that they now had to come up with another name but as we've seen they just

00:22:28.120 disregard these concerns and uh move on i i mean ideally we'd get to the point where as a society we

00:22:33.880 could take a step back and have an honest discussion about history the good the bad and the ugly and and

00:22:39.080 talk about how we learn from it and i'm wondering within the field of history you were a professor for

00:22:45.640 quite some time at the university of guelph how are historians dealing with this because any that

00:22:49.960 i've spoken to have really just been shaking their heads because they feel they they can't actually

00:22:55.000 talk about history anymore in a way that is honoring and respecting the discipline of it and historiography

00:23:02.200 yep well historians are are well some some of them are causing the problem but a lot of them just throw

00:23:08.200 up their their hands in despair it's a it's a very very sad situation and in the case of my own city

00:23:14.920 councillors chris voice offered to give him a briefing he didn't want a briefing you see and

00:23:20.040 then tried to get uh a a meeting uh set up uh in his college well in his college was quite happy to

00:23:27.480 have meeting about danda but had to have the other side well the other side wouldn't appear they didn't

00:23:32.760 want to debate with us i think perhaps they understand that they've been putting out a lot of

00:23:37.640 bullshit and it would it would come out in a scholarly exchange a panel at in his college so 0.87

00:23:46.120 shelby say that the people who have been very forceful about it aren't willing to meet on a

00:23:51.480 panel don't want a briefing and aren't willing to debate the issue so when you look at the way this is

00:23:59.160 going here obviously jennifer dundas who's a descendant of dundas himself has been incredibly

00:24:04.920 outspoken on this and you have other people who who are but it's not even like you and jennifer are

00:24:11.720 losing the argument as you know no one even wants to have the discussion the city council has had such

00:24:17.560 little interest in genuinely interrogating the facts here have they or have i admit have i missed some

00:24:23.480 grand dialogue that olivia chow presided over about this well it's it's just shameful the the expense

00:24:32.200 is that what's gotten so many people riled up and that's a legitimate concern also the process

00:24:37.720 how many people were consulted about it you know and certainly we know that for the changing of the

00:24:42.200 name of dundas street merchants and all kinds of people would be inconvenienced so city council backed

00:24:47.880 down on that but the young dundas square and the ironic thing is young really was a scoundrel

00:24:53.480 he actually did some good things in his life too but later in life he actually made money out of

00:24:58.680 the slave trade and so here we have dundas gets attacked and young doesn't get attacked although

00:25:05.000 dundas was solidly pro abolition and of course young was not now i'm not suggesting that we should rename

00:25:12.840 young street very long street it is too because too much ontario history has gone uh on it but young

00:25:19.960 dundas square is a terrible place it's a lousy square i'd like to see the money spent not on

00:25:25.880 renaming it but improving it yeah and and this is where we go back to the cost of it and and you know

00:25:31.800 in some ways government spending a few hundred thousand here a few hundred thousand there it

00:25:35.880 it seems like pocket change with what they spend on everything else but but you're right i don't think

00:25:39.720 anyone who walks around downtown toronto would say that the most pressing concern is the name on the

00:25:44.760 sign it's the people on the streets it's the drug issues it's the you know the derelict buildings

00:25:49.480 that you see in in parts of that and all of that is like lower on the priority list than uh you know

00:25:55.160 maligning this historic figure yes now it's interestingly young dundas square happens to be

00:26:02.360 just a block away that's east west and a block north south away from the old saint james's square the

00:26:08.520 name no longer exists but that's where edgerton ryerson when he bought for the government six

00:26:14.920 acres of swampy ground and that became the education department there hadn't been one before

00:26:20.760 and the first normal school to teachers college uh teacher training college and actually a museum

00:26:27.720 art museum natural history museum which later became the royal ontario museum and they were there

00:26:33.080 was a lot of space actually for experimental agriculture to check out what crops were hardy

00:26:39.320 enough and that's basically uh the origin of the ontario agricultural college uh for years of course

00:26:45.880 now uh based at guelph and so here we have i would like to see because edgerton ryerson is the other

00:26:52.040 person roughly at the same time people began to denounce henry dundas were also denouncing edgerton ryerson

00:26:57.720 and in both cases they were dead wrong not just a question oh partly wrong partly right they were

00:27:03.560 dead wrong on it dundas was consistently pro-abolition and ryerson was consistently pro-indigenous nothing

00:27:09.960 to do with the residential schools so these are two subjects in which toronto has got them both wrong

00:27:16.360 and ironically young dundas square is only a block away from where ryerson did some of his best work

00:27:23.240 i would like to see young dundas square uh renamed ryerson square but it will take a while before

00:27:29.080 that can happen because people will have to realize that they really botched up the ryerson decision

00:27:34.920 yeah and put a big giant plaque up there explaining this whole thing to everyone and you're right

00:27:40.280 because there are certain figures in history where you say okay this person may have done this great

00:27:45.080 thing but they also did this terrible thing and you have to contextualize it and i understand that and

00:27:50.280 i'm sympathetic to that but in these cases that the people you mentioned are not even guilty of

00:27:54.440 what they're accused of doing so it's not even like they need to be contextualized and look anyone who's

00:27:59.640 ever uh you know enjoyed a public education in ontario should be tremendously grateful for what ryerson

00:28:04.600 did indeed but people don't realize that we take it for i didn't realize it until i just found it out

00:28:09.880 relatively recently we take it for granted that there's a public school system and that it's a good

00:28:15.000 system i mean some people prefer to send their children to private schools and can afford it but

00:28:20.040 nobody's going to say you have to go to a private school because the public schools aren't good

00:28:24.120 enough of course they're good enough and that just didn't happen in ryerson's time very few children

00:28:30.040 went to school at all they were all fee paying there was no teacher training and he got those things

00:28:36.280 going when i say he got them but he was a civil servant he couldn't legislate them but he could make

00:28:41.800 recommendations and he managed to persuade enough people uh to support him interestingly one of the

00:28:47.800 people he certainly was persuaded was very helpful was john a mcdonald at that time mr john a mcdonald

00:28:55.320 not sir john a after confederation so he had to persuade people in the house of assembly mpps that

00:29:02.280 is to support education and ontario became a leader basically thanks to ryerson's agitation but they went

00:29:11.560 along it took legislators to actually do the work and get it done and it happened well it is a

00:29:19.800 fascinating piece you touch on important parts of uh you know the history of ghana the history of

00:29:24.760 canada the history of scotland and uh the insanity of toronto city council so you've gone around the

00:29:29.560 world in a way that only you can lynn mcdonald in your piece in the national post toronto's costly push to

00:29:35.320 trade young dundas for a name more closely associated with slavery thank you so much lynn good to speak

00:29:41.000 to you again appreciate it thank you thanks again to coming on the show always a lovely conversation

00:29:48.520 there but i do want to turn to what's happening in your child's classroom this has been an issue in

00:29:54.600 which i think for far too long parents have been i don't want to say complacent but they've just been

00:29:59.640 trusting they've trusted the system that when your kids go to school they're learning about the

00:30:04.040 things they're supposed to be learning about it's a reasonable assumption but not exactly in 2024 we

00:30:10.440 have heard so many stories i would say some in fact rising to the threshold of horror stories about

00:30:16.600 where parents have just been mortified to learn what their kids are learning or perhaps not learning

00:30:22.440 is a better way of putting it now parents when they learn about this overwhelmingly rejected this was a

00:30:28.040 bit encouraging it came out in a study done by the fraser institute last week on how parents do in

00:30:33.400 fact want balance and not political bias when it comes to what's being taught in the k-12

00:30:39.720 classroom 86 agree that there needs to be facts over opinions in canadian classrooms the overall

00:30:46.040 support for parental notice of controversial topics another key sticking point here 81 believe in this

00:30:53.240 some other numbers we'll dig into here with the study author page mcpherson from the fraser institute she

00:30:58.600 is the associate director of education policy and it's always good to have her on page thanks for

00:31:03.160 coming on today yeah thanks for having me so i mean in some ways it seems just blatantly obvious when

00:31:09.240 you put the question to a parent do you want your kid to get facts in the classroom well of course

00:31:13.480 they're going to say yes but it's not obvious in practice as we're seeing yeah so i think this is

00:31:19.240 interesting and it sort of speaks to two different things one is um whether teachers focus on facts

00:31:25.880 or whether they share um opinions or interpretations of their own of those facts in the classroom and

00:31:33.480 the other is the curriculum you know which the provincial government does have uh quite a lot of input

00:31:39.080 into control over um and whether or not that focuses on specific facts that children should be learning

00:31:47.320 or so so in other words whether it's really content rich or if it leaves it more open um to teachers

00:31:54.760 interpretations it gives kind of a vague overview and then teachers can roll with it in whichever

00:31:58.920 direction that they choose so we gave the framing um you know that sometimes there is some debate over

00:32:04.760 whether or not teachers should be sharing um their the facts or their interpretations of the facts which

00:32:11.320 can include their opinions and as you said 86 percent of uh of parents with kids in k-12 schools with

00:32:19.480 a representative sampling right across the country so in every province and region 86 of those parents

00:32:25.480 believe that teachers and curriculum in k-12 schools should focus on providing students with facts

00:32:31.080 rather than teachers interpretations or opinions and a learning environment within which students can

00:32:36.200 openly explore those facts were these pretty constant across the country they were yeah so we really

00:32:42.520 found um just with one we can get into it later it has to do with whether or not a child um should

00:32:49.320 be our parents should be able to remove a child from a specific a controversial lesson without impacting

00:32:54.120 the child's grade parents in quebec did not the majority did not feel that way in literally every case

00:33:00.680 on every question that we asked um in every province or region parents were in complete consensus uh not

00:33:09.800 complete consensus but overwhelming majority consensus that um that they should be involved um and informed

00:33:17.160 about what their children are learning and that facts uh are really are are really important and and

00:33:22.200 should trump opinions in classrooms and in informal school activities when we had last fall the discussion of

00:33:29.320 a quote unquote parental rights it was typically from one side of the equation and it was about one

00:33:33.960 particular area predominantly it was about a lot of gender and teachings related to sexuality but

00:33:39.640 the questions that you're asking are on their face content neutral here when you're saying facts

00:33:44.440 not opinions that could be someone who is like a really really hardcore climate change alarmist that

00:33:51.240 doesn't want an opinion critical of that or it could be the opposite of that so the whole point of

00:33:56.200 this is i would see it is that when you put facts above a teacher's opinion facts above a teacher's

00:34:00.600 interpretation it is non-discriminating yeah that's right so you know i think what is a controversial

00:34:07.720 issue and as you said you know 81 more than four and five parents with kids in k-12 schools believe

00:34:13.720 that schools should provide advanced notice of controversial topics being discussed in class

00:34:18.120 or during formal school activities what is a controversial issue is going to depend on the family

00:34:23.720 the different families are going to have different views on what a controversial is for their kids

00:34:27.640 and what we see here is that there is a clear consensus among parents that they they want to

00:34:32.760 be given a heads up so they can make their own decisions for their kids and we explained you know

00:34:37.560 in sort of our preambles to these questions we did this polling with lege you know very reputable

00:34:42.520 polling firm here in canada um that you know the controversial issues just some examples might involve

00:34:48.040 sexuality or gender might involve um how we respond to climate change but but ultimately you're right

00:34:54.200 i mean it could be any sort of issue um and it really depends on the family some families might

00:34:59.240 wish to discuss these issues with their children in advance other families might wish to remove their

00:35:04.200 child from a lesson that they just don't feel as age appropriate but ultimately parents want to have

00:35:08.280 that heads up so explain to me where policymakers should go with this because we saw a little flurry of this in

00:35:15.640 new brunswick in saskatchewan and alberta we certainly haven't seen it nationally i think in

00:35:20.920 ontario there's been a bit of ambiguity about uh where the province wants to go with this but what

00:35:25.640 would you take from this if you were to write the policy that government should be looking at

00:35:30.360 well i think you know when it comes to curriculum this is a really important takeaway from these poll

00:35:35.240 results in my view um because parents so strongly feel 86 percent feel that facts should be emphasized

00:35:41.960 rather than teachers opinions um that really speaks to how curriculum should be designed and it should

00:35:48.120 be including more facts and it should be content rich which gives teachers a very clear framework and

00:35:54.120 guide to how they should be teaching these subjects for example we looked at most recently in a study

00:36:00.360 that we released at the fraser institute at the history curricula in manitoba bc and ontario in bc and

00:36:06.440 ontario there were very few specific facts that children had to learn by the time they graduated

00:36:12.680 grade 12. by the time they graduated high school they had to know almost no canadian history so if

00:36:19.640 you were to change the curriculum change those curriculum guides for teachers make it a lot more

00:36:23.720 specific about what exact facts the people the dates you know the names all of these different things

00:36:29.480 um that children uh should be learning in their curriculum well then it gives teachers a much more

00:36:34.280 clear framework of what to teach rather than just teach about genocide and then they can kind of go

00:36:39.880 in whichever direction that they like ultimately that means that who the child's teacher is that

00:36:45.480 really matters uh because they can take it in so many different directions so i think it speaks to

00:36:49.560 curriculum it also uh speaks to i think you know just the expectations around how teachers have to

00:36:55.240 present the material so more than three quarters of parents 76 believe that children should be

00:37:00.360 presented both sides of controversial issues or they should be avoided entirely if you can't present

00:37:05.480 both sides do not talk about controversial issues with our kids 91 of parents believe classroom material

00:37:11.480 and discussions should always be age appropriate and as we talked about that 81 of parents with kids

00:37:17.880 in k-12 schools believe that schools should provide advanced notice so as you said you know this

00:37:22.840 has come up in ontario new brunswick where there's third party groups that are presenting to kids

00:37:27.160 um in new brunswick recently there was a discussion that was supposed to be about

00:37:31.080 hpv went in a a totally different direction addressing a bunch of different sexual behaviors

00:37:35.800 parents were outraged the premier spoke out um and and so this is something that really could have

00:37:40.600 been avoided if parents had just been given that advanced notice so if provincial governments

00:37:45.480 you know say to to school boards you need to give that advanced notice it has to be kind

00:37:49.640 of baked in there um then individual schools or school boards will know that that's an expectation

00:37:54.280 now this is getting into a trickier territory and i'll give you the upfront warning that you can

00:38:02.120 just sidestep the question if you'd like because you're a policy analyst here and not a politician but

00:38:08.120 there's a challenge now in that the word fact has been weaponized in a lot of ways and there are there

00:38:13.240 are subjects that uh people that are putting what's clearly an opinion would uh just defend tooth and

00:38:19.000 nail us fact and i think you see this on uh some gender things where uh you have a certain group 0.96

00:38:24.520 that says something is settled and it's not so if we dig into this a little bit further how do you

00:38:30.200 account for that in this when you'll have curricula which are developed uh totally thinking or totally

00:38:35.880 asserting things as facts that might not be well so we actually specifically got to that a little bit

00:38:41.560 in our questions and how we frame them we specifically said but controversial issues about which there is no

00:38:48.520 clear societal consensus or consensus among experts so there are some things where there is a societal

00:38:54.920 consensus right and i mean you could go down the rabbit hole but we know that there are you know

00:38:59.640 two plus two equals four and obviously i know you can run with this andrew but in general we know that

00:39:05.240 there are things that are established facts that children should be taught then there are things

00:39:09.800 like the response to climate change like sexuality and gender where there might not be a societal

00:39:14.840 consensus or a clear consensus among experts and that is specifically what we ask parents about in

00:39:20.120 this poll in those instances do you want advanced notice parents said yes do you want to be um able

00:39:27.480 to remove your child from the classroom um and and nationally speaking i said i as i mentioned the only

00:39:33.640 real outlier on this was was parents in quebec but seven in ten parents believe that other parents

00:39:39.880 should have the right to remove their child from a lesson without consequence to their child's grade

00:39:44.920 um if it is regarding a controversial issue so parents um are again there's a very clear majority

00:39:51.240 here that believe that if there is no societal consensus on these controversial issues give parents

00:39:56.760 the ability to decide of course what you're asking about gets to curriculum design as well um and and

00:40:03.080 ultimately i think you know what we're hearing from this poll if i had to interpret that parents are

00:40:08.440 strongly valuing facts rather than interpretations or opinions in terms of what their children are

00:40:14.120 going to be exposed to in lessons and in formal school activities that to me sends the message that

00:40:19.480 we should just focus on those clearly established facts and not wade into the political stuff in our

00:40:24.920 formal curriculum and curriculum guides there you go you took the tough question head on so i appreciate

00:40:30.360 that page just before i let you go i have to ask you about what's happened in alberta here this week

00:40:35.240 we talked about this in the ontario context and you had said basically it was a good start that they

00:40:40.760 were doing some things that you liked and you wish they would do more this is referring to getting

00:40:44.840 cell phones out of the classroom alberta has come out now and said that cell phones from kindergarten

00:40:51.000 to grade 12 will be out of the classroom with narrow exceptions for students that have you know

00:40:56.600 particular health needs is this basically what you wanted in ontario in alberta now

00:41:01.640 i think that um the devil will be in the details as the provincial government moves forward

00:41:07.400 with this policy the policy seems to suggest that phones need to be out of sight and on silent

00:41:13.800 or turned off so how they enforce okay will it be turned off the issue that sometimes comes up with

00:41:19.240 these policies and this happened in ontario who you years ago introduced a policy around this and it just

00:41:23.960 wasn't tough enough because it left it up to the individual schools or boards to decide

00:41:28.760 um and and ultimately you had teachers who were having to surveil and nag their students all day 0.67

00:41:33.880 you had phones that were on silent and out of sight but they were buzzing in kids pockets and we know

00:41:38.760 that this creates a distraction not only for johnny but for susie who's then distracted by johnny who's

00:41:44.920 reaching for his pocket and it can take kids according to some studies a full 20 minutes to regain focus

00:41:50.600 on an academic lesson after being distracted by a digital device um so i think the best kind of policy

00:41:56.840 is something that is as blanket as possible uh right across the board with phones locked away

00:42:02.600 for the school day so whether you've got them in those those you know yonder pouches the lockable

00:42:07.400 pouches in kids lockers in some sort of special designated phone locker i think that's the cleanest

00:42:12.760 simplest policy with some exceptions uh which actually you know we had noted in our writing about

00:42:17.640 this at the fraser institute in the alberta government i think the education minister specifically

00:42:21.480 noted one reasonable exempt uh exemption would be for a diabetic student who needs to monitor his

00:42:26.680 blood sugar using a nap on his phone there are reasonable exemptions in there but giving

00:42:31.480 you know every kid who asks for one oh i just need to check my phone for such and such a reason

00:42:37.160 it's very distracting for that kid and the other kids in the class and ultimately the research shows

00:42:42.440 it really does have a negative impact on academic outcomes particularly math scores um so i think alberta

00:42:48.840 you know like i said the details will matter here i think they have an opportunity to really be a

00:42:53.160 leader on this issue by having a very clear and blanket ban but we'll see where they go with it

00:42:58.200 well and the problem of the info the enforcement problem is one but it also if teachers are the

00:43:03.880 ones that really have to enforce this creates the patchwork just as with every other rule in school

00:43:09.080 some teachers are more lenient than others some will turn a blind eye i had some teachers where

00:43:13.400 you could wear the hat in the classroom others you could chew gum so you're going to see that same

00:43:17.480 dynamic here and all of a sudden as you mentioned you're not even seeing this blanket ban in action

00:43:22.920 yeah well exactly and i mean look i'm you know i don't think that at the fraser institute we are

00:43:28.040 quick to say oh we need government to ban all of these different things um but but ultimately the

00:43:33.480 research on this really is just so clear in terms of student academic outcomes but also mental health

00:43:39.080 there's cyber bullying that goes on through the day at schools it's extremely distracting for kids

00:43:43.880 it impacts their ability to socialize face to face it impacts their ability um to to not be distracted

00:43:49.720 to actually focus in class and academic achievement student success like this is what schools are for

00:43:56.520 so we do ban things in schools and of course this is government policy for government schools there are

00:44:01.320 already independent schools and charter schools in alberta that are leading on this issue they've

00:44:05.400 already implemented their own policies to ban phones in the classroom and they're doing so quite

00:44:11.560 successfully that doesn't mean that there needs to be sort of a ban on technology unless a school

00:44:15.720 wants to go in that direction because that's sort of the approach that they're offering um but you

00:44:20.040 can still be innovative and leave room for kids learning about technology without that really deep digital

00:44:25.720 distraction and as you say that patchwork approach where teachers are having to take so much time out of

00:44:31.480 their day to nag and surveil and then some teachers are not doing it because they've thrown up their

00:44:36.600 hands and they've said i can't enforce this if i'm not backed up by a clear government policy that i

00:44:41.640 can say look it's out of my hands it's not my decision we don't bring drugs to school we don't

00:44:45.640 bring weapons to school we don't bring our smartphones into the classroom and that's just how it is

00:44:49.640 um so i do think that in this case you know there are certain things we ban at school and smartphones

00:44:53.800 should be one of them all right well great stuff as always page mcpherson thank you so much for coming

00:44:58.440 on today thank you all right that does it for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of

00:45:04.600 canada's most irreverent talk show doing a deep dive into the state of canada's democracy that's coming

00:45:10.280 right up well not right up it's coming up in you know almost 24 hours but anyway i hope you'll be

00:45:14.680 there for that thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton

00:45:19.560 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - June 19, 2024

Parents suing Catholic hospital for not giving their daughter assisted suicide

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